Lacework Uses AWS Partner Network to Grow 3X Year over Year, Closes $3.95 Million in the First Year, and Received One of the Largest Cybersecurity Startup Funding Rounds in History

Lacework is using the AWS Partner Network (APN) to drive new business and accelerate sales cycles. The company delivers comprehensive and continuous end-to-end AWS security and configuration support for workloads and accounts running in AWS and multi-cloud environments. Since joining the APN, Lacework registered and validated over 1,200 ACE opportunities and closed $3.95 million via the AWS Marketplace in the first year. In November 2021, Lacework received the largest funding rounds for a cybersecurity startup in history: $1.3 billion led by Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, and Tiger Global Management.

Lacework offers a multi-cloud infrastructure security platform delivered as a service to help customers automate cloud security. The company’s unique Polygraph technology automatically learns activities and behaviors unique to a customer’s environment and surfaces unexpected changes, along with the full context, to make security investigations quick and easy. Lacework was built for the cloud and the continuous changes of cloud workloads, making it an ideal tool for companies that need to scale security.

Michael Musselman, Senior Director of Technology and Strategic Alliances at Lacework, says, “Lacework was purpose-built from the ground up. Unlike other security companies, we didn’t assemble multiple products to create our solution. From day one, Lacework was designed to take a data-driven approach to uncover cloud security risks and threats.”

In March of 2020, Musselman and other Lacework executives began working more closely with Amazon Web Services (AWS) account managers and marketplace liaisons to get the support they needed, and the company subsequently joined the AWS Partner Network (APN). “Most of our customers at that time were built on AWS or had a lot of AWS infrastructure, and Lacework itself was designed for the platform,” says Musselman. “Joining the APN just made sense.”

Lacework was listed in the AWS Marketplace in April 2020 and completed its first contract deal in the same month. The company also earned competencies in both security and containers.

Soon after, Lacework was nominated to the AWS Global Startup Program, an invite-only go-to-market program built to support mid- to late-stage startups that have raised institutional funding, achieved product-market fit, and are ready to scale. In August 2020, the company was invited to join the AWS ISV Accelerate Program, a co-sell program for AWS Partners who provide software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS.

“At that time, ISV Accelerate was nomination only for AWS Partners,” says Musselman. “This was significant validation from the AWS team that in less than nine months, we were being recognized as a top partner in the areas of co-sell, co-build, co-market, and marketplace.”

The AWS ISV Accelerate Program helped Lacework drive new business and accelerate its sales cycles, resulting in tremendous growth and new customer acquisitions. The company recently reported 3X revenue growth year over year for the second year in a row. In November 2021, Lacework received the largest funding rounds for a cybersecurity startup in history: $1.3 billion led by Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, and Tiger Global Management.

Musselman says that AWS co-sell has been a key component of Lacework’s go-to-market success, with 10 of its top 13 deals in Q2 2021 transacted through the AWS Marketplace. “ISV Accelerate allows us to continue to share our pipeline with AWS and also helps easier access to ISV Success Managers, which has helped unlock an acceleration of launched opportunities and an inflow of AWS-originated APN Customer Engagements (ACE) Program opportunities,” adds Musselman.

Since joining the APN, Lacework has registered and validated over 1,200 ACE opportunities. “The first year, we closed $3.95 million via the AWS Marketplace and really started to see the effect it had on the customer’s buying journey,” says Musselman. The collaboration has also streamlined the company’s sales motion. In just over a year, Lacework grew its AWS alliances team from one person to five. Going forward, Lacework will continue working closely with AWS. “We expect to more than quadruple our ACE validations, opportunity launches, and AWS Marketplace revenue,” concludes Musselman.